Stoneship: Cyan moves from big games, looking to sell small games via apps

Whether or not Cyan Worlds ever gets around to doing another large Myst-style game/online world, the Mead-based software company is turning out a number of quicker, easier-to-build games for the iOS platform.

Here's how Cyan's CEO Rand Miller described the focus of Stoneship, the new App to be released soon. Screenshots from Stoneship were provided courtesy of Tony Fryman, Cyan's president.

Cyan Worlds has managed to become somewhat proficient with iOS (iPhone,
iPod touch, iPad) development after our conversions of Myst, The Manhole,
and Riven (coming soon).

Among our small team of programmers we had a couple guys who had an idea for a new iOS game - something specifically for the iOS platform and different from Cyan Worlds' usual direction. We gave the go ahead and Stoneship was born.

With our reduced staff and resources it's a huge advantage to have smaller
development projects that we wrap up a little quicker. And developing for iOS is also great for small developers like us, because we can self-publish in the App store very easily.

The iOS platform has enough advantages that we'll be doing more projects in the future.